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Cancer victim wins suit Medford Clinic, staffer liable for $3.07 million By Bill Kettler and Mark Freeman A Medford woman dying of breast cancer says her victory in a medical malpractice suit should encourage people to demand diagnostic tests that can find cancer before it spreads. A Jackson County jury awarded Laurie Wooding $3.07 million Friday. The jury of eight women and four men found Medford Clinic and one of its nurse practitioners, Susan Nebelsick, were negligent by failing to make a timely diagnosis of Wooding�s breast cancer in 1998 despite Wooding�s requests for tests. The cancer has spread to Wooding�s bones, and she will probably die within three years. "People need to take charge," says Wooding, 34. "Doctors should offer every kind of treatment and give patients choices." Portland attorney Jeff Street, who represented Nebelsick and the Medford Clinic, which has since closed, says he believes verdicts like this one have become more common in a time when jurors seem to hold medical professionals "to nearly impossible standards of perfection." Street, who intends to appeal, says cases of misdiagnosis or delayed diagnosis like Wooding�s can generate sympathy for patients that can be difficult to overcome in a trial even when medical evidence suggests that all applicable standards of care are met. "I think there can be an overwhelming amount of sympathy for the patient," Street says. "That may explain why we�re seeing some verdicts that are contrary to the general weight of medical evidence." Wooding came to the clinic in March 1998 after discovering a lump in her breast during a self-examination. She requested a mammogram but was told there was no need for the procedure because she was just 31 at the time. She returned to the clinic in July when the lump in her breast persisted and the surface tissue had become inflamed. Wooding obtained a mammogram five months after her first visit to the clinic, but the results were inconclusive. No diagnostic tests were performed. "Her cancer was missed and it shouldn�t have been," says Wooding�s attorney, Susan Vogel Saladoff of Ashland. During the three-week trial, Street tried to convince the jury that Wooding�s condition did not result from malpractice. In presenting the defense for Nebelsick and the clinic, Street called five medical witnesses �including doctors and nurse practitioners � who all testified that they believed Wooding�s conditions did not result from malpractice. Street says people�s own dissatisfaction with their health care could be creating the kind of backlash onto medical professionals that leads to verdicts like this one. "We believe Susan Nebelsick met all applicable standards of medical care," Street says. "I do believe the sympathy issue can be very hard to overcome in a case, even when the medicine is very good." Nebelsick declined to comment on the lawsuit. The jury found no negligence in another defendant, Dr. Stephen Cook, a radiologist. Saladoff says the verdict should encourage women "to be aware of our bodies, and when we notice something different we need to advocate for ourselves. We need to trust that (instinct) and the medical profession needs to trust that, too." Saladoff said the judgment is one of the largest ever awarded in a medical malpractice case in Jackson County. In April 2000, a jury awarded a $10 million judgment in a suit filed against Dr. Walter Carlini and Rogue Valley Medical Center. In June 1999, Rogue Valley Medical Center agreed to pay $10 million to settle a malpractice lawsuit filed by the family of Morgan Smith. Nebelsick and the Medford Clinic are defendants in another breast-cancer medical malpractice suit. A 51-year-old Josephine County woman who underwent a double mastectomy in 1999 claims that Nebelsick and the clinic failed to diagnose her cancer for a year. Winona Lee McEwen, 51, is seeking $600,000 in damages. Reach reporter Bill Kettler at 776-4492, or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.